Verdict:
Reaping is a biblical thriller, but its proportions definitively aren’t biblical. The idea is: what if the biblical plagues started happening in the modern world. An idea like that could spawn a cool epic disaster movie, with memorable special effects, but we instead get a small provincial detective story.
The frog plague lasts a few seconds and consists of a few frogs plopping into the water. The deaths are unimpressive. Whether the budget was not sufficient or there was some kind mismanagement, The Reaping doesn’t meet the expectations.
The movie just about manages to cling to life with its satisfactory acting and atomsophere. This doesn’t come as a surprise, given the experienced cast. Hilary Swank, Stephen Rea and Idris Elba deliver a far stronger performance than this movie deserves. This decent acting and the wish to find out where the disjointed story is going, keeps the movie interesting.
A lot of weird stuff happens in succession, but none of it makes much sense. The writers seem to have been so happy with the concept of the premise, that they didn’t put much work in actually fleshing it out into a full-fledged story. But this sort of works to the film’s advantage because it keeps you watching in confusion. In the end, you can explain everything away by reading a foretelling from a bogus religious text.
The Reaping has way more hype around it than it has content, but it’s inoffensive. It’s a forgettable religious thriller for a Halloween movie night, the one that you start watching at 7 pm while the nachos are still being made, as a warmup for the main horror film you wanted to see.